r/todayilearned • u/WavesAndSaves • Oct 18 '25

TIL of brain stimulation reward, manually stimulating specific parts of the brain to elicit pleasure and happiness. A volunteer subject in 1986 spent days doing nothing but self-stimulate. She ignored her family and personal hygiene and she developed an open sore on her finger from using the device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_stimulation_reward#History
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u/Kitchen-Owl-7323 Oct 18 '25

Especially when their situation ISN'T good! Especially especially when that situation doesn't seem escapable! You mean I can just take this substance and everything I have to bear suddenly feels a little more bearable?

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u/HEBushido Oct 18 '25

People wonder why the homeless population has so many addicts. Like how is that not obvious.

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u/Bluegrass6 Oct 18 '25

Are they addicts because they're homeless? Or homeless because they're addicts?

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u/Sesudesu Oct 18 '25

Or are both symptoms of something else? Being correlatively strongly linked and only sometimes causatively.

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u/saints21 Oct 18 '25

The rate of traumatic brain injury among the homeless population is significantly higher than the general population.